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August Burns Red

评阅 @ McLovinSkittlez

August Burns Red enters their fifth installment (not including their holiday album) into their legendary arsenal of some of the best metalcore the world could ask for. One of the best things about ABR is their consistency. Since their 2005 release of Thrill Seeker, they have released an LP every two years, also excluding their holidays album. With that, and this is my own personal opinion, every single record has surpassed its predecessors. August Burns Red is extremely well-known for their potently melodic riffs, extremely aggressive and technical drumming, and especially their off-beat and oddly timed breakdowns, which really catches the listener off-guard and keeps their music enormously interesting.

One thing I'd like to point out is their vast array of instrumentation. The band realized that they have put out a decent number of releases thus far, and needed something innovative to add to their music, and they have done this quite successfully. Don't get me wrong, the instruments the band experiments with are nothing too new to the genre, but for the band itself, this has allowed them to be a lot more experimental and progressive with their sound, and I fucking love it! They consistently use the cello on 9 of 11 songs on Rescue & Restore, and I greatly enjoy the feeling of relief and complete gratitude it gives you, but maybe that's just me. On the song treatment, they experiment with a Caribbean-style percussion kit, and although it kind of just sounds a little odd, I respect the fact that they are seriously experimenting to alter their sound just a bit, but still give you the potent "ABR" sound new and elder fans alike have come to love. As stated before, the percussion sounded just odd, but gave the song more of a progressive feel, and that is to be said with a lot of the instruments they experiment with. At the end of the song Treatment, there is a trumpet solo that kind of feels crammed in. Not in the sense that it sounds sped up or just tossed into the song to lengthen the track, because the song transitions nicely into it, but it feels like they might have been trying a little too hard to progress their sound, and if it isn't broke...

Overall, Rescue & Restore has surpassed Constellations as my favorite album. Everything about it has completely caught me off guard, and kept me 100 % interested. Alike every ABR album, we're given very potent melodic riffs, absolutely astonishing and technical drumming from one of the best drummers in the metal genre as a whole, Matt Greiner, Jake gives us the same powerful vocal performance we've come to expect, but he also explores his vocal repertoire by testing his range, which only shows how much his music means to him, and that he is still trying his very hardest to progress his sound. One thing that stood out the most to me while listening to this was how much the bassist stood out! He goes absolutely insane throughout the entire record! The only fault within Rescue & Restore I've discovered was stated previously, and is that the band may have tried a little too hard to sound a little different, and sometimes just sounds a bit odd, but it's still intriguing and I respect how experimental they still are! I'm going to give Rescue & Restore an 18/20 score!